: The Samovar Girl by Moore Frederick Ferdinand - Siberia (Russia) Fiction; Russia (Federation) History Revolution 1917-1921 Fiction

@FreeBooksThu 08 Jun, 2023

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THE SAMOVAR GIRL

THE VALLEY OF DESPAIR

The sun was up, but it was only a patch of weak yellow light against the dull sky which roofed the Valley of Despair. Lowering wisps of fog still shrouded the hills about the exile settlement--fog that had lifted from the frozen and desolate reaches of the Ingoda, from the smoking huts of the tiny plain, from the snow-streaked slopes on which squatted like a hideous monster the great low, rambling prison of yellow-painted logs.

The morning was bitter cold. The streets were almost deserted. The windows of the log buildings still glowed with the dim yellow light of guttering candles behind the frost-bound panes. White smoke from the chimneys of the houses and huts rose straight up into the air, for there was not even the ghost of a breeze. And the cold still air carried sounds with startling clearness--the tolling of a bell at lazy intervals, the barking of a dog, the distant cry of a wolf, and now the ringing clatter of axes being driven into frost-laden wood by the invisible exiles.

Shadows appeared at the windows frequently. For the Czar's mail was due this morning from Irkutsk, and the house-huddled people were waiting for the first tinkle of the sledge-bells. The mail! The mail from Moscow, from Petersburg, from Tambov, from the Valley of the Beloved Volga, so many heartbreaking versts away! The mail would bring life and death, joy and sorrow, sentence and pardon to Chita, in the Valley of Despair. The mail would bring the Czar's word, the heaven-sent mercy, or the curt condemnation. The mail, by the relays of sledges, was the reach of the scepter from the throne of majesty to the Valley of Despair in Siberia.

None listened more eagerly for the first jingle of the mail-sledges that morning than Peter, son of Peter, in the tiny hut of Gorekin the bootmaker, an exile but by the gracious compassion of the governor a member of the "free gang." Peter, son of Peter, was only ten years old. He worked with his father in the boxlike hut on the Sofistkaya, helping to make boots for the officers of the Czar and the Cossacks.

Peter's father was a political. He had been sent to Siberia for thinking--thinking about government, and inducing others to think. Which was foolish, for the Czar and his ministers settled all affairs of government for the good of the people. Yet God was good, for Peter's father had been admitted to the free gang because he could make boots, and so did not have to stay in the big prison on the hill. And Michael Alexandrovitch Kirsakoff, Excellence, and Czar's Governor, allowed Peter and his father to have a tiny hut to themselves--a place of one room, one window, a fire-pit with a stone chimney, and shelves against the log wall on which to sleep. They even had a battered brass samovar in which to boil water for their tea.

Peter's father was not old, though his back was bent by years in chains before Peter was born, and then by more years of stooping over a stitching-frame sewing boots. "Gorekin the old bootmaker," everybody called him, partly because his face was covered with a long and heavy beard, and partly because his eyes had such an old look in them--eyes which looked past everybody far into the future and seemed to be waiting for some strange vision to appear.

Peter was proud of his father, and loved him beyond expression. For his father knew everything--even knew how many versts it was to Moscow, information which many people gave money to know, and knowing, kept the secret for themselves. There are many things in an exile colony which it is forbidden to know, so whisper talk is bought and sold, some dealing in secrets of a certain kind, and some selling coming news about revolutions.

Peter's little round head was always being puzzled, and his blue eyes were always full of questions. He loved the Czar, just as everybody else loved the Czar--only when there were no soldiers listening, or no secret police of the Third Division, men would swear bitter oaths in whispers against majesty. It was not easy to tell who might be secret police, for your friend to-day, talking against the government of the Czar, might to-morrow prove to be one of the Third Division, and then doors of the big prison on the hill would open for you, and dawn would meet you with an execution squad.

Peter could not remember his mother. She had followed his father into exile, and Peter had been born in The Street of the Dames. His mother had died that day. Peter's father said now it was just as well, for life was really death in the Valley of Despair. And though Peter was only ten, he already knew something of the bitterness of life. Had he not seen a man with a back all raw from whipping, who had escaped from the prison? Yes, he had come crawling to the bootmaker's hut, too weak to go on into the wilderness with the others who had escaped, and could only lie all night close to the fire-pit, waiting for the soldiers to come in the morning and take him away.

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